


a modest offering

by stillmadaboutpetra



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Cannibalism, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Everybody is fine, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Starvation, Survival, Witchers Have Feelings (The Witcher), anyway its fiiiiiiiiiiine, uhhh unknowing cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:15:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26827981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillmadaboutpetra/pseuds/stillmadaboutpetra
Summary: He remembers to cook it before he brings her out of her forced reverie.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia
Comments: 29
Kudos: 86





	a modest offering

**Author's Note:**

> so sorry for all the ?? dead dove tonight! 
> 
> reverse a modest proposal?

He spares her the worst of it all with Axii. Her little ashen head drops forward, snow tumbling from the hood of her cloak. She sways, too young to even pretend to resist. She’s just a child, and in the peace of his care, her body gives way to more frantic shivers. He wants to embrace her and keep her warm, but he cannot do that yet, for his hands have careful work.

He’ll only have a few minutes. The fire rages, pushed into a roar by igni, by many tree limbs he felled and that steamed for a long time before they took to the flame. He lays Ciri down and bundles her swiftly and takes himself just far away enough that the blood will not show so clearly. Snow has a way of laying things bare which ought be left buried.

The storm took them off guard just as Nilfgaard took them off guard. Just as the Skellige ships failing in that storm, just as a pregant belly, just as anything over and over took them off guard. The indifferent inevitability of the universe pushed them to the edges, not just of the world, bracketed in sleep-blue mountains, but to themselves; Geralt feels the edges of his person, cut and sharpened, and how they war against the unknown and innocent edges of a little girl.

That girl is his child now, his bound duty. Small and shivering and weak with winter’s hunger. Kaer Morhen looms unseen and distant in the blister of white before them. But he will deliver her, whole and sound, even if he returns less whole himself. That is just of him. What man would do less for a child? For his child?

The cut is clean at first, then tenderly ragged. Not too deep or else it won’t heal. He needs to be able to walk on it. Can’t cut too much or he’ll drag the muscle and then it’ll be hell from here on out. He hesitates, wishing his body richer, wishing himself ample and birthing with flesh to spare. Life is lean and it proves itself leaner now.

He takes enough. He stitches quickly, the long strip of his thigh brilliant and cold on the snow. He’ll survive, and now, she will too. He can spare parts of himself for her. It’s only flesh. At least he knows the mouth which eats it. At least he feeds this body by choice. It suits him. He feels tall and strong with his offering, though in his hand it is modest and humble and right now all he can give.

He remembers to cook it before he brings her out of her forced reverie.

“Geralt?” his name a shivering thing in her mouth. Now he brings her to him, sits behind her and holds her warm by the fire. The wound throbs and he quiets it as he quiets her, laying the meat into her gloved and stiff hands.

“You fell asleep. A bird dared to wake you.”

He does not kiss her head, as he might, as he one day will. But he rests his chin on her crown and when she chews the meat, asking nothing of its source, he feels the mechanical repeitivie working of her jaw. Laughs when she comments on the toughness. When she suggests salt. Waves away her careful offering.

“Did you eat?” She worries for him even as she does not want to share. She’s hungry, sick with it, shaking with it. She thought she was strong and used to hunger; she thought, when she found Geralt of Rivia, she would never hunger again. She is nearly right. He does his best to keep her fed.

“I will be fine. Eat, Ciri.” 

And she does. It is almost like nursing her, with her against his chest, hearing the small sounds of her mouth and the swallowing. He laughs at this too and shakes his head to himself. He’s a mad old dog, isn’t he. But look, he can keep this child alive. This is not so different than slaying a monster. He will conquer this too. He will make Ciri a survivor. His body is only ever flesh for trade, and for once, now, he offers it as a gift. 

He will never tell her. She will not know the difference between choices. A monster eats. Well, child, all things must eat. But maybe she will, one day, when she sees how the griffin feeds its young with the lads from a hunting party. All things must eat. 

“This is a clean one,” Eskel says, when he looks Geralt over, when they are safe and sound. Eskel touches the very neat scar. Then the other. And the other. “What got you here?”

Geralt grins with the memory. “Ciri.”

He does not explain.


End file.
